The Lover to His Beloved: If you do not know, O most beautiful of women, simply follow the tracks of my flock, and pasture your little lambs beside the tents of the shepherds.

For this is what the Lord has told me: “I will wait ¹  and watch from my place, like scorching heat produced by the sunlight, ²  like a cloud of mist ³  in the heat ⁴  of harvest.” ⁵ 

For my sake alone ¹  I will act, for how can I allow my name to be defiled? ²  I will not share my glory with anyone else! ³ 

“Hey, ¹  all who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come! Buy and eat! Come! Buy wine and milk without money and without cost! ² 

Now and then ¹  there would be something wrong ²  with the pot he was molding from the clay ³  with his hands. So he would rework ⁴  the clay into another kind of pot as he saw fit. ⁵ 

While you were feeling secure I gave you warning. ¹  But you said, “I refuse to listen to you.” That is the way you have acted from your earliest history onward. ²  Indeed, you have never paid attention to me.

But whenever you pray, go into your room, ¹  close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you. ² 

So you too, when you have done everything you were commanded to do, should say, ‘We are slaves undeserving of special praise; ¹  we have only done what was our duty.’” ² 

For just like the lightning flashes ¹  and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. ² 

I tell you that this man went down to his home justified ¹  rather than the Pharisee. ²  For everyone who exalts ³  himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

But a time ¹  is coming – and now is here ²  – when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks ³  such people to be ⁴  his worshipers. ⁵ 

because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord ¹  and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew! Do you not know what the scripture says about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?

For the one who was called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord’s freedman. In the same way, the one who was called as a free person is Christ’s slave.

With regard to our brother Apollos: I strongly encouraged him to visit you with the other brothers, ¹  but it was simply not his intention to come now. ²  He will come when he has the opportunity.

So then, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence, ¹ 

in that ¹  our gospel did not come to you merely in words, ²  but in power and in the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction (surely you recall the character we displayed when we came among you to help you). ³ 

I have written these things ¹  to you who believe ²  in the name of the Son of God so that ³  you may know that you have eternal life.

They replied, “The man questioned us ¹  thoroughly ²  about ourselves and our family, saying, ‘Is your father still alive? Do you have another brother?’ ³  So we answered him in this way. ⁴  How could we possibly know ⁵  that he would say, ⁶  ‘Bring your brother down’?”

But if the bright spot stays in its place, has not spread on the skin, ¹  and it has faded, then it is the swelling of the burn, so the priest is to pronounce him clean, ²  because it is the scar of the burn.